This article presents the techniques used by six teachers for their writing classes. To help her students get their topics on paper, Carrie DuPre instructs her students to call themselves on their cellphones and leave themselves a message on voice mail. Samm Erickson asks his students with laptops to be "the researchers" in their literature class. Richard Diguette lets his students read Shakespeare "Sonnet 29" at the start of their classes to increase their abilities in understanding a text. Michael Bobkoff starts his literature class by trying to develop a working definition of a poem. Gerald Lee Ratliff uses a performance activity in his class. To discover the unvoiced questions of his students, Kerry Dirk implements Friday index cards, a practice that requires students to turn a card in at the end of each week. The cards may contain any questions that students have about what they covered during the week, but they may also contain questions about the course in general.